. . . .AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: “PSYCHO” (1960)

Today, April 16, is the 50TH Anniversary of cinema’s masterpiece, Psycho.

 

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho is a horror film based on a screenplay by Joseph Stefano, adapted from the 1959 novel by Robert Bloch. The novel was based on the crimes of the real life Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein.

Psycho opened to negative reviews, especially with the famous shower scene, but large box office returns led to more positive reviews and garnered four Academy Awards nominations. Psycho is now considered one of Hitchcock’s best films and is considered a work of cinematic art by international critics.

The theme/soundtrack is excellent with just the right touch of tension, creepiness and foreboding to match the acting. Composed by the late Bernard Herrmann, the violin/cello crescendo builds suspense and drama and drives home the terror of what is to befall the victims in a very visceral way.

 

The film spawned two sequels, a prequel, a remake, and an unsuccessful television spin-off:  Psycho II (1983), Psycho III (1986), and the prequel Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), the last being a TV movie written by the original screenplay author, Joseph Stefano. Anthony Perkins returned to his role of Norman Bates in all three sequels, and also directed the third film. The voice of Norman Bates’ mother was maintained by noted radio actress Virginia Gregg with the exception of Psycho IV, where the role was played by Olivia Hussey. Vera Miles also reprised her role of Lila Crane in Psycho II. The sequels were all inferior to the original.

Bates Motel a failed television pilot, later aired as a television movie. Anthony Perkins declined to appear in the pilot, so Norman’s cameo appearance was played by Kurt Paul, who was Perkins’ stunt double on Psycho II and III.

 

The film shows the paths that cross between Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a secretary who is fleeing from Phoenix, Arizona after she  stole $40,000 from her boss’s company, and her arriving at the Bates Motel, where she meets the proprietor, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins, in a superb role). Marion checks into the motel, and after having dinner and a talk in Norman’s office, she begins to have second thoughts about keeping the money she embezzled, and decides to go back and face the music. While undressing in her room, unbeknowst to her, Marion is being watched by Norman through a peephole he has drilled into one of the walls. Since Marion’s room is next to the motel office, this affords Norman the ease of looking at her as she disrobes and prepares for bed. Marion has decided on coming clean with her crime and symbolically washes herself clean of her actions, preparing to return to Phoenix and give the money back to her boss.

But, alas, it is not to be. Later while taking a shower, a dark figure of a female enters Marion’s room while she is showering, and. . . .

 

Even fifty years later, that shower scene still is deeply disturbing to watch.

But, the shower scene is just one of many memorable scenes in this groundbreaking movie.

Lila Crane (played by Vera Miles) investigates her sister’s disappearance with Marion’s boyfriend, Sam Loomis (played by John Gavin). The trail leads them to the Bates Motel, where they find a stonewalling Norman who is not so cooperative in helping them find Marion. They seek help from the town sheriff, but come up empty-handed there. Flustered with Norman’s lack of cooperation, and with making no headway with the sheriff who has paid Norman a visit, only to report back that all is well and that Marion probably has headed back to Phoenix, they hire a private detective Milton Arbogast, (played by Martin Balsam), who tracks down evidence that Marion did indeed stay at the motel, and never left. Unfortunately for him, things turn out very horrifically.

 

 Eventually, Lila and Sam come back to the Bates Motel to do some investigating of their own, and almost lose their own lives when they split up, Lila going into the House at the Top of the Hill, while Sam keeps Norman occupied at the motel. Lila goes inside and investigates the basement where she finds a very quiet lady of the house sitting in a chair, when Mother having fought and overcome Sam, barges in to take matters in hand. Mother is then overpowered and revealed to be none other than Norman.

Norman is taken to a mental hospital, where the psychiatrist explains to everyone present (Lila, Sam and the sheriff), that Norman is no longer Norman, but, is now Mother. The movie ends with one of the most brilliant episodes in cinematic history as mother now sits talking to herself while in isolation.

As the scene fades, a glimpse of a skull can be seen in Norman/Mother’s face, as Marion Crane’s car is pulled out of the swamp near the Bates Motel where so many victim’s vehicles have been submerged after they were murdered by Norman/Mother.

 

 

Psycho was movie full of firsts:  the killing off of a major character less than 30 minutes into the film (Janet Leigh’s Marion); the use of words such as transvestite, psycho-sexual terms never uttered before in a movie; the showing of the unmarried Marion and Sam in bed together, after having apparantly just had sex; the scene of a toilet and the flushing of a toilet, when toilets were never shown in movies. Psycho is considered the first “psychoanalytical film”, where the combination of nudity, sex and violence heretofore had never been seen in a movie, in tackling the three stages of psychological development:  the id, the ego, and the superego.

Perkins’s character was so psychotic and disturbed as to have absorbed his mother’s persona, where they ultimatley merged as one, and at the movie’s end, we see the psychological destruction that has occurred to Norman’s mind.

Psycho went on to become the most spoofed and lampooned movie of all times, but it remains the most well-known and the first of the horror movie genre.

So, pull up a seat and watch Psycho, if you dare.

Decades later it can still frighten and thrill with its innovative cinematography, crisp dialogue/acting and mesmerizing music.